Reverse Mission: Transnational Religious Communities and the Making of US Foreign PolicyBy Timothy Byrnes.Georgetown University Press, 2001.216 pp.by Frances Kissling
Timothy Byrnes is an engaging academic political scientist who has written extensively and wisely on religion and politics, particularly the political role of the institutional Catholic church (see Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe, Rowman &...

A review of The World Before Her, now showing in the Tribeca Film Festival.
by Natasha RahejaThe opening sequence of director Nisha Pahuja’s documentary The World Before Her cuts sharply between salwar kameez and swimsuits, Marathi and English, Bombay and Aurangabad, stilettos and chappals, open hair and plaits, bhangra beats and nationalistic hymns, saffron and...

A review of The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics, by Irina Papkova.
Oxford University Press, 2011.
By Sean Guillory
In late February, four members of the Russian feminist punk group, Pussy Riot, performed a “punk prayer” on the altar of Christ Our Savoir Cathedral, the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Their action, which included singing...

Cinematically, [Stan Brakhage's Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind is] one of Tree of Life’s closest arboreal cousins, a kind of film best described as devotional: one that gives us a direct experience of the world, or as Nathaniel Dorsky...

26 January 2006 Sharlet: Publishers Weekly reviews Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder‘s new edited volume, Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales From Interfaith Homes.”‘Half’ is an interesting, incorrigible, perplexing and profound moniker in its own right, a label that somehow captures the existential angst that all people experience.” Mine, anyway; I’ve an essay in the book, which isforthcoming in April. Fellow contributor Katherine Weber’s essay, “Oy,...

26 January 2006 Elie Wiesel and the Hazards of Holocaust Theology By Peter Manseau Editors’ note: This essay was first published on The Revealer‘s sister site, Killing the Buddha, in April, 2001, long before Oprah’s Book Club chose Wiesel’s Night as its latest selection. Yet, especially in light of doubts concerning the reliability of Oprah’s previous pick, James Frey’sA...

31 October 2005 By Michael Rose Following in what seems like a trend of long profiles of charismatic or enigmatic Christian leaders, this week’sWashington Post Magazine features “Mysterious Ways,” an 8,000-word article about Mike Ferree, a Pentecostal tent revivalist. Ferree makes a meager wage compared to, say, Rick Warren, subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent profile in...

17 August 2005 Raw-skinned and born again. By Jeff Sharlet Excerpted from Oxford American’s annual Southern music issue Let’s look at the facts about Al Green. Or rather, the fact, the biographical detail he does not discuss, the moment around which the whole story turns: around 4 a.m., October 17, 1974, when the last, great, sweet falsetto soul singer of...

19 June 2005 Saving America? Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society / By Robert Wuthnow reviewed by Scott Korb Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton’s Center for Religious Studies, believes very strongly that, when it comes to faith-based services in this country, journalists and policy makers just don’t get it. His new book, Saving America? Faith-Based...

11 June 2005 God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn’t Get It / By Jim Wallis reviewed by Leora Bersohn We have no proof as to what the most unread book of the last twenty years may be, but we can certainly hazard a guess: A Brief History of Time has long been...

25 January 2005 God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America By Naomi Schaefer Riley 274 pp. St. Martin’s Press. Reviewed by Jeff Sharlet If you rely for your understanding of American academe on Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, or William Bennett, you may be inclined to think that today’s...